Laptop for my new hobby

cbgold · Jan 17, 2018

Just got my first DSLR, a Nikon D 7500. Inherited Nikon 17 to 35, 10 to 24, and 70 to 300 lenses which although old still work beautifully. I’d like to get/run either Elements or Lightroom but need a new laptop. Haven’t bought a computer in over 5 years. Been living off my phone. So my question is what kind of specs, hard drive size etc. should I be looking for? Not just the minimums but realistic. Mac or Windows? This will just be for my new photography hobby, no gaming or anything like that. Thanks for your help.

ac12 · Jan 17, 2018

Don't scrimp on the CPU. At least not much. Get a 4-core processor, at least 3GHz (faster is better).
My old laptop is dismally slow to do photo editing, compared to my newer desktop.

I have 6GB of RAM in my laptop, and it does fine.

Most of the hard work is done in memory so HD specs are not that important. But you want enough space on the drive that you don't run out. I would say at least 1GB. A SSD (solid state drive) is nice, but not necessary.

I would also get a large screen. I can't stand editing on small screens. I end up having to scroll around the image, because I have to magnify the image to really see the details as I edit. Remember that the editor itself will take up screen space. On a laptop, this is one component that you cannot upgrade, so choose with care.

BrentC · Jan 17, 2018

On the PC laptop side a minimum latest i7 processor, 12GB Ram (memory is cheap, fill her up), SSD HD and a good screen. Not sure if cost is an issue but I can HIGHLY recommend both the Dell XPS 13 and XPS 15.

KmH · Jan 17, 2018

You'll want an IPS screen (not TN) and a lot of hard disc space for both storage and use as a scratch disc for your editing app.
You may even want to partition the hard drive.

If you don't edit with your laptop under the same ambient light all the time, or with the screen always at the same angle, your edits will be inconsistent to some degree.
Monitor Calibration for Photography

Pro image editors use a laptop in the field to store image files but they edit on a desktop that is regularly calibrated for whatever ambient light falls on their display.

SCraig · Jan 17, 2018

ac12 said:
Most of the hard work is done in memory so HD specs are not that important. But you want enough space on the drive that you don't run out. I would say at least 1GB. A SSD (solid state drive) is nice, but not necessary.

One GIGABYTE? Windows won't even run on a 1gb disk drive, it won't fit. My Windows directory alone is 14gb. For photo editing I'd recommend a MINIMUM of a 2tb (that's terabytes or 2,000 gigabytes) hard drive plus a 256gb SSD for the operating system.

I also echo the thoughts of an external monitor. You will never get consistency from a laptop screen.

Cortian · Jan 17, 2018

ac12 said:
But you want enough space on the drive that you don't run out. I would say at least 1GB.

ITYM 1TB

ac12 said:
A SSD (solid state drive) is nice, but not necessary.

Dependable 1TB SSDs (Intel, Samsung) are still pretty spendy.

(Personally, I'd take a Mac over an MS-Win PC any day of the week and twice on Sunday, regardless of the use for which it's intended, but that's just me.)

Overread · Jan 17, 2018

Do you need a laptop? For equivalent money you get more in terms of performance with a PC and more choice to upgrade it over time if you choose - whilst with a laptop you have to spend more and you're pretty much locked into it totally without much choice to upgrade over time.

A few thoughts:
1) I would strongly suggest that you want at least 1TB if not 2TB of storage space for photos. If you shooting JPEG only its not as much an issue, but if you shoot in RAW then the file sizes get big very fast

2) I second the need to have an IPS screen (not TN) as mentioned above. This might well put the laptop price up very high to start with. Basically with flatscreens if you've got a TN the contrast, colour and brightness of what you're looking at changes significantly with the angle of view. IPS gives you a much wider range of angled views where you get the normal view without it changing).

3) If you're spending out serious money on a good computer then get yourself a calibrator. Something like the Colour Monkey or Spyder - these will let you calibrate the screen to give a consistent output suitable for photography editing. Most typical screens are set to be very overly bright and contrasty; once you calibrate you'll get a much more faithful view (personally I also find its also FAR less strain on the eyes as well).
Note calibration of monitors drifts over time so calibration wants to be done every couple of weeks - hence buying calibrator is good long term investment.

Note, if you can't get an IPS screen then a calibrator still helps a lot; just remember that you'll have to be looking very straight at the screen (trickier on a laptop) to get the proper calibration; though don't get too crazed about it, a few degrees of angle won't be the end of the world

4) In today's market you can get Lightroom and Photoshop from Adobe on an annal account, charged monthly. UK side its under £10 and I believe its similar in the USA prices - if you're going to be serious with photography then its a small cost to get access to two of the best software packages for photo editing.
Otherwise lightroom and a stand-alone version of lightroom are more than suitable for editing.

5) A Solid State drive basically runs faster than a regular harddrive. Many laptops are now coming with two drives; a smaller SSD for running the operating system and programs off; and a regular harddrive for data storage. This is because SSD are more expensive than regular HD so many times its more affordable to have a 250GB or 500GB SSD and then a 1TB or 2TB regular hard drive.

I'll still say be very sure you want a laptop, if you don't really need it then desktop PC will give you more range to expand it later (eg improving performance - getting a better screen - adding more internal hard-drives* etc...)

*back ups are a big help as any kind of hard drive has a risk of failing. Back ups help a lot to protect your photos and other important data.

weepete · Jan 17, 2018

i5-6600 or better with 16GB RAM, 1TB HDD, high res IPS panel, colourometer

jcdeboever · Jan 17, 2018

I'd get a Mac. Either an all in one with retina display. Or a Mac book pro.

dxqcanada · Jan 17, 2018

Budget ?

Nintendoeats · Jan 17, 2018

I work with computers as pieces of hardware extensively. I have done a great deal of programming, 3D modelling/rendering, drawing/image manipulation in Photoshop, gaming and other PC intensive tasks. I enjoy and keep up with PC building as a hobby. My brother, who has a computer science degree and does QA on datacenter equipment, recently asked ME to pick the parts for his new computer. I hope that establishes a degree of crebility here.

I would like very muuch to light both Apple and Microsoft on fire, but for 99.9% of people it makes much more sense to buy Windows machine. They run more programs(though this is not as true as it used ot be), you have many more options in terms of machines and they are cheaper. The only advantage I see in a Mac is that it will probably hold its value a bit better, but if you plan to run the computer until it dies then this doesn't matter.

The advice above about screens above I wouldn't argue with for a moment. In fact, you may wish to buy a cheaper laptop and a nice monitor since that will give you more options and will mean that you can keep the screen when you eventually change laptops. (Sorry, didn't see this was already suggested)

As far as processors, don't sweat it that much. Because AMD's good laptop CPUs (Ryzen) were only recently brought to market, you will probably want to stick with Intel. I wouldn't get anything less than an i3, but the fact is that even that is fast enough to do most things tolerably and my experience has been that Photoshop isn't great at taking advantage of the additional threads offered by higher end chips. This said, I have seen i7s in pretty cheap laptops. Consider i3 a minimum and anything else a nice bonus that you will sometimes notice.

8 GB of RAM is minimum and basically ok, 12 would be nice, 16 is the outside edge of reasonableness. RAM can be upgraded later if you find you don't have enough, and RAM prices are quite high right now (in fact China is credibly investigating manufacturers for price fixing) so this will make a difference in the cost of the machine.

More HHD space is better, but you can always store the bulk of your photos on an external drive. Oh, and on that note GET AN EXTERNAL DRIVE FOR BACKUP! Hard drivers fail. You can use a program called freesync to easily back up everything from one drive to another.

You really want something with an SSD in it. Just having the OS on an SSD will make the computer infinitely less of a pain to use. Try to get something with at least a 64 GB SSD in it. If the SSD is bigger, you can pure more commonly used programs on it which will make those more responsive as well. An SSD is far more important than a faster processer once you get to the i3s. Without one your CPU will sit idle much of the time while it waits for things to load off the HDD.

If at all possible, get something with a dedicated graphics chip of some kind in it. This usually adds at least 100 dollars to the cost of the machine, but the improvement in smoothness of any graphics application is meaningful.

Don't buy an Acer or HP. That's just experience talking.

I hope that is useful, I would be happy to help in any other way I can. If it were me I would go the seperate monitor route, but I have a desktop with 3 monitors so I'm probably a slightly different kind of user

ac12 · Jan 18, 2018

Cortian said:
ac12 said:

But you want enough space on the drive that you don't run out. I would say at least 1GB.

Click to expand...

ITYM 1TB

ac12 said:

A SSD (solid state drive) is nice, but not necessary.

Click to expand...

Dependable 1TB SSDs (Intel, Samsung) are still pretty spendy.

(Personally, I'd take a Mac over an MS-Win PC any day of the week and twice on Sunday, regardless of the use for which it's intended, but that's just me.)

You caught me, yes, 1 TB.
My first HD was a 10MB drive. And I used to work with 8k DIP memory chips. So these HUGE capacities on todays computers still trip me up.

My current laptop has a 512GB SSD.
Were it a rotating HD, I would use a 1TB HD.

TCampbell · Jan 19, 2018

My photo library has grown beyond what could realistically be stored on a laptop hard drive and if you are a heavy shooter, the same will likely happen to you. Digital Asset Management apps such as Lightroom have no problem allowing you to store images across multiple drives. I primarily keep all my images on an external storage array. Lightroom can build preview images which are much smaller than RAW images and these are used so you can find what you're looking for ... and determine which external drive has the real file.

I say this because for performance reasons, I am at the point where I wont buy a computer that has a traditional hard drive these days... I've moved to SSDs. The price of SSDs has come down considerably... but really big SSDs are still expensive. So if you want to buy a smaller SSD for a laptop (to make it fast) and just use external storage for your photo libraries... that works fine.

I'm a Mac guy and I don't think Apple makes any laptops these days that still have traditional hard drives... I think they're pretty much all SSDs.

If you're more comfortable with Windows due to years of experience with it, you might want to stick with that... photo apps such as Lightroom and Photoshop run on both platforms equally well.

One downside though... you can't "buy" Lightroom anymore. Now it's a $10/month "subscription" and the minimum subscription period is 1 year. So really... it's $120/year.

I'm expecting there will be some competition in the space because a lot of people resist having to sign up for "subscription" software.

Skylar (formerly Macphun) has an app called Luminar that looks to be a Lightroom competitor. Their digital asset management module is not yet available but they claim it will be here this year and that anybody who buys their software will get it. But the key thing is... it's not a "subscription". It's listed as $69 ... but I often get $10 off incentives. So for half the price of what Adobe charges to "subscribe" to Lightroom, you would have the traditional (perpetual) software license that you buy once and use it as long as you want.

Serif has a Photoshop competitor called Affinity Photo and that looks _really_ impressive. It's better than I expected... it does such a good job that it makes me think a bunch of employees quit Adobe to start a competitor ... fixing all the things Adobe should have fixed years ago.

I've seen this happen elsewhere in the computer industry many times. Company produces software product. Product starts to stagnate. Lead developers get frustrated with management that they're not investing or allowing developers to improve the product ... so they quit, get some VC funding, and start a company building the product they wished they could have written... and it's much better than what their original company had.